You spend six months trawling the net for comedy, drama, politics and TV, and suddenly they all come at once. Last night presidential front-runner, Hillary Clinton, broadcast what has to be one of the weirdest and singularly ill-advised advertisements in the history of modern politics. Within minutes of it being broadcast US networks and newspapers were chasing their tails attempting to make sense of it.

Mrs Clinton, along with Bill and Chelsea, allowed themselves to be filmed imitating - moment for moment and shot for shot - the very final scenes of the Sopranos.

Yep, that's right. The long running mafia drama has been afforded a calamitous post-modern tribute. Is this just a typically crass piece of political propaganda? By the standards of political propaganda this is neither typical nor indeed crass. It is thoroughly mad though.

In the unlikely event that the right-wing goons at Fox haven't yet gotten the point, the scene is accompanied by Journey's Don't Stop Believin', the same song that plays out in The Sopranos. And then, just as you think your jaw can drop no more, in walks Vince Curatola, the scary-looking bloke who played Johnny 'Sack' Sacramoni in the series.

If the Republican candidate, and Vietnam veteran John McCain, had posed as Rambo it would have been sad. But Hillary posing as an abused wife, whilst her husband poses as a ruthless Mafia Don is way beyond tragic.

Thus far the US media seem to have reacted benignly to this weird act of political suicide. Newsday enthuses thus; 'It illustrates the growing reliance by some of the more technologically savvy campaigns to connect with voters and potential donors in a clever, relatively inexpensive format that is infused with pop culture references, contemporary themes or intimate moments.'

Well I beg to differ. If the Clintons and the cretins who commissioned this advert believe that we will buy into a politician simply because they appear to be able to understand something about popular culture, then they are sorely wrong. The fact that they should have chosen something from TV that is so fresh in the mind, so replete with unseemly connotations, and so infuriatingly unsatisfactory, beggars belief.

Tony Soprano has claimed his final victim and her name is Hillary Clinton. What a sad fate for such a brilliant, funny and ambitious woman. It's A Royal Knockout excepted, can anyone think of anything more horribly misjudged?